America's Proud Socialist Tradition

Why isn't Eugene V. Debs a universally-known hero in our American classrooms?

Why doesn't every American student know that our government sentenced Debs to TEN YEARS in prison for delivering this bit of wisdom about war and peace and class struggle in Canton, Ohio in 1918, and that his sentence was upheld by a unanimous Supreme Court?

Here's the short speech being read by Mark Ruffalo to an audience thinking about the Iraq War in 2007:


And here's an excerpt in print of the section beginning at the 1'30" mark of the video:

"Wars throughout history have been waged for conquest and plunder. In the Middle Ages when the feudal lords ... concluded to enlarge their domains, to increase their power, their prestige and their wealth they declared war upon one another. But they themselves did not go to war any more than the modern feudal lords, the barons of Wall Street go to war. The feudal barons of the Middle Ages, the economic predecessors of the capitalists of our day, declared all wars. And their miserable serfs fought all the battles. The poor, ignorant serfs had been taught to revere their masters; to believe that when their masters declared war upon one another, it was their patriotic duty to fall upon one another and to cut one another’s throats for the profit and glory of the lords and barons who held them in contempt. And what is war in a nutshell? The master class has always declared the wars; the subject class has always fought the battles. The master class has had all to gain and nothing to lose, while the subject class has had nothing to gain and all to lose—especially their lives. They have always taught and trained you to believe it to be your patriotic duty to go to war and to have yourselves slaughtered at their command. But in all the history of the world you, the people, have never had a voice in declaring war, and strange as it certainly appears, no war by any nation in any age has ever been declared by the people. ... The working class who fight all the battles, the working class who make the supreme sacrifices, the working class who freely shed their blood and furnish their corpses, have never yet had a voice in either declaring war or making peace. It is the ruling class that invariably does both. They alone declare war and they alone make peace. Yours not to reason why; yours but to do and die. That is their motto and we object on the part of the awakening workers of this nation. If war is right let it be declared by the people."